In Walcott’s interview with Bill Moyers he mentions Caliban from The Tempest. Walcott explains that Caliban is not talked about like Tarzan. He says the best poetry – besides Prospero’s speech – is spoken by Caliban in the end. For Walcott, this is where the greatness of Shakespeare is because he gives Caliban a musical language. Caliban learns from Prospero. Walcott provides Caliban from The Tempest as an example of his ideal of sharing rather than dependence between colonizer and colonized.
Césaire’s A Tempest offers a very different view on Caliban’s language. Caliban does not speak in beautiful poetic forms like in The Tempest. He tells Prospero “You didn’t teach me a thing! Except to jabber in your own language so that I could understand your orders” (17). Caliban uses his language to curse and spurn Prospero, while Prospero responds, “Beating is the only language you really understand” (19). In Césaire’s adaptation, there is no beautiful, shared language – there are only ugly words spoken between Prospero and Caliban. Prospero does nothing to teach Caliban, hiding his knowledge of science and magic from him and only sharing this with Ariel. Prospero’s language is the instrument which takes away Caliban’s freedom and it is forced upon Caliban to make him understand orders. The language Prospero and Caliban speak is not a true sharing because it is unwillingly done so.
Walcott said in the interview that he likes to focus on the present rather than his past. He was brought up in what he describes as a benign colonial situation, but the history of his family would not have looked like his present. It is a present and positive view which he brings to his writing, but it is also confined and tested by works like A Tempest, as Césaire challenges Walcott’s interpretation of the beauty of Caliban and his learned language.
I also found this difference interesting between Cesaire’s and Walcott’s interpretation of the character. I think Walcott made Caliban use a more aggressive tone in his speech to show the adaptation’s underlying allegory for contemporary African-American oppression. While I believe both interpretations of the character have great powers of speech, Shakespeare’s Caliban does not possess the fervor and rage which Caliban in Cesaire’s “A Tempest” is often capable of, showing his deep frustration with his enslavement within Prospero’s Imperlialist regime.
I think Liz makes an interesting point about Caliban using Prospero’s language against him. It’s interesting that they actually share the same language. Yet Caliban’s use of the language appears to be “uncivil.” Caliban adopts the language, but, unlike Ariel, he doesn’t adopt the power dynamic that goes alongside it. Caliban never calls Prospero “Master.” Rather, he masters the language and uses it for his own gains.
Do you think that Walcott’s reading of Caliban is perhaps too idealistic? It seems to reflect the positivity that he finds in hybridized identity in his own works. As you mentioned, he grew up in a more benign situation and I think that this truly shows in his identity and works on identity. Cesaire, on the other hand, focuses on a more negative view of identity. Perhaps this is a result of resentment that he harbored towards the colonizers and a view that the colonizers forced the natives to be slaves and/or change their ways? Are Cesaire’s and Walcott’s readings incompatible with each other? Or are they just speaking on different experiences and, therefore, have different things to say?
I noticed the difference between their interactions, as well. Caliban here, though he was treated much the same way as in the original play, seemed to take great pains to describe all the issues with how Prospero had treated him. While the language may not have been shared any more, I think this could be taken as a testament to Caliban’s complete rejection of Prospero’s treatment. He is using Prospero’s own language against him, but in his own way.